[VelonautG]

Hello, I just joined, but I’d like to share a little about myself. I am a high school student, freshman, and I’ve been doing basic 3D modeling for the past year and a half. I’ve only used Blender as it is free and more recently learning the basics of Fusions 360. My dream career is to become an Aerodynamics Engineer, which obviously involved CFD. I’ve taken a look into programs such as SU2 code, but I do not know the formulas and what not. The reason why I want to seek advice from you freelancers is because I feel that I may feel overwhelmed by the pros in the other pages and because I will be experimenting with this in my free time. For now I’d like to know how I should start, such as what programs and basic pointers on how I should start. Sorry for the broad request, but I don’t know how to put it and what I should ask since I’m such a noob. Thanks, advice very much appreciated.

-Gabriel

[RcktMan77]

Hi Gabriel,


I can appreciate your enthusiasm, and I certainly encourage you to explore it further and follow your interests, but what you're asking for is to basically jump 10 years ahead. Performing a CFD simulation isn't just running some piece of commodity software; otherwise, they would just train monkeys to do it...


You have several years of math courses ahead of you combined with applying that knowledge to fully model the motion of fluids and arriving at a governing set of equations for fluid motion. Then you have to learn and understand how those equations can be solved numerically and the inherent limitations of a given numerical method being used to model the flow in a very specific flow regime in order to correctly solve a flow problem. Beyond that, there are recommended practices to learn about and other tools beyond the solver itself one has to master. Even college undergraduates these days who are applying CFD while using some commercial off-the-shelf package for a project struggle without fundamentals mastery that usually comes later during a graduate level program. The biggest danger of marching ahead without a mastery of the fundamentals is that if you feed a solver with garbage, you're going to get garbage out as a result, and then mistake that result for something physical. Most of the recommendations for starting points assume some basic math and physics knowledge which you're not likely to see for another three or four years. If you're intent on pushing forward regardless, I might recommend you start with John D. Anderson's text, "Computational Fluid Dynamics The Basics with Applications".



However, my advice to you would be to apply your extra time to mastering the fundamentals of math and physics as you encounter them in your upcoming coursework. Learn to walk before you run... I imagine in 10 years the field of CFD will likely have changed a bit from how it exists today.

[VelonautG]

Thank you for the response. I knew there was coding involved, thus advanced math. My main goal in high school is to complete Calculus and Physics by senior year, which will require summer school courses and doing practice on my own. I fully understand what you mean when you said jumping ahead ten years. Calculus will be fairly difficult to get into at my school because the school only offers AP Calculus, which obviously has its pros and cons. I appreciate the advice. I arranged a meeting with my counselor to see about placing in more advanced courses the next year. I guess what got me into asking the question is that AutoCAD had once offered Flow Design, if you remember. From what i’ve seen, it looked very simple and straightforward, I didn’t see much code if any. Of course, there is the probability that I didn’t get the full idea, but that was then. AutoCAD pulled it off the market, not like I was going to buy a subscription due to the high price, but it really caught my eye. I love the analogy you threw in. Are there any recommendations with placing into higher courses? I know this derails the main idea, but will help me.

[RcktMan77]

Hey Gabriel,

Flow Design and other CAD modeling packages which offer similar flow analysis features are intended to give designers a first-order estimate of flow characteristics around solid models they create using correlation methods. This can help them make quicker decisions about the various trade-offs they're considering when developing a parametric solid model. It isn't a substitute for higher fidelity analysis using CFD, FEA, or other computational analysis.

Calculus is pretty much the launching-off point for your journey to becoming a CFD specialist. From my experience, the curriculum in high school is not as rigorous as that given at the college level. If it were me, rather than trying to rush into a high school level AP Calculus course, I would make sure I had acquired a deep knowledge of everything that comes before. Even upon completing AP Calculus in high school I would urge you to take it again as a freshman in college. I remember my freshman aerospace engineering introductory course had around 40 people enrolled. Four years later, I graduated with 6 others--5 of whom were transfers and not part of my original freshman class and 1 other who started a year before I did, but took a year off to complete missionary work. That's a pretty low matriculation rate, which I'm sure others here have also experienced. I've seen many others struggle early on before quitting, because they had been given a false sense of what they had learned in high school and pushed forward too quickly in college before they were adequately prepared.

Again, I would suggest patience as a virtue. One suggestion I might make for you to work on now is to practice your standardized test taking preparation. It's an important skill, and scoring well will open up a lot of opportunities for you later on. Schools and scholarships tend to advertise that they want to see well-rounded candidates, but I guarantee you that standardized test scores are their primary criteria for filtering applicants--at least in their first pass of cuts.

[VelonautG]

I think the reason why I want to sort of rush ahead is because I feel that I landed on the wrong foot, meaning that algebra 1 is very easy for me, and I would've wanted to start in geometry. You bring back some nice memories. I had an elementary school teacher who always said, "Patience is a virtue class" finished off with a pleasant smile. One of my favorite teachers too. I think that when I have the time to, look at different math courses and try them out and see what I might be comfortable doing in my spare time and possibily apply for a summer course. I don't know how I'd jump ahead in science. I'm taking biology for my second semester but the school has us do it over again in sophomore year, but that is the purpose of my counselling meeting tomorrow. Thanks again, I'm glad to hear from someone who has been through the similar process. I also want to mention that I don't want to sound like I want to skip a class, but to make the learning curve in college somewhat more understandable.

[LuckyTran]

So I echo the sentiment. But I do want to highlight that even people with PhD's and college professors have trouble understanding CFD. You have a long way to go (10 years sounds about right) to be even worried about it. Just enjoy high school.


But the one thing you can do now or at least soon is establish your foundations in Math (Calculus and numerical methods) and Physics. Physics is needed of course to understand what any of the equations mean. Numerical methods are really important if you know you will be dealing with CFD later. Very basic ideas like root-finding algorithms (and stable versus unstable algorithms) are too easy to forget.


Just yesterday I talked to a PhD student who couldn't figure out how to find the maximum of a function.